Customary self-supporting vehicle bodies for passenger vehicles, including the supporting structure, are manufactured from sheet-metal parts. It is a known practice to secure a front fender panel on a front fender brace which extends in a forward direction from a central region of the forward A pillar assembly disposed along the side of the vehicle body. Such a front fender brace typically consists of two deep-drawn sheets which are connected together to form an enclosed cross section. The enclosed cross section typically is not constant over much of its length and in most cases consists merely of a single bent sheet in the forwardmost region. To increase the stiffness of this arrangement, it is also the known practice to provide an additional triangular sheet as a reinforcement between the front fender brace and the lower portion (forward door pillar) or bottom half of the A pillar assembly.
The steel sheets used to construct such bodies are formed by the deep-drawing process. The pressing tools used for forming the sheets are relatively expensive but allow for very large batch quantities, thus providing an economical solution for industrial-scale manufacture. However, due to the high investment costs needed for tooling, the above described process is very cost-intensive for small production runs. In addition, it would be desirable to improve the rigidity and crash characteristics of the known embodiment of a front fender brace using sheet-metal parts without increasing weight due to additional reinforcements or added material thicknesses of the component parts.
It is therefore known from published European Patent Document EP 0 146 716 B1, particularly for small production runs, to manufacture vehicle bodies for passenger vehicles with a supporting structure consisting of hollow sections which are connected to one another by junction elements. Here, the hollow sections are designed as light-alloy extruded sections and the junction elements are designed as light-alloy castings.
In such an embodiment, a junction element is positioned at the A pillar assembly, between a forwardly and downwardly angled forward roof pillar and a substantially vertically oriented forward door pillar. This junction element includes recesses or mounts for receiving the adjoining ends of the forward roof pillar and the forward door pillar as well as a forward cross member and a front fender brace. The forward roof pillar, the forward door pillar, the forward cross member, and the fender support brace are embodied as light-alloy extruded sections.
Here, however, the front fender brace has only a simple, approximately square cross section. This results in a waste of interior space between the exterior surfaces of the square cross section fender brace and the generally curved interior surface of the fender panel supported thereon. The presence of the space between the fender panel and the fender brace also means that the curved fender panel is more easily subject to deformation from minor impacts in this region.